The same story lands very differently on a two-year-old and a six-year-old — not because one is cleverer, but because they are listening for different things. A rough map of what each age wants makes choosing easier, and makes the story more likely to do its job, which is to end in sleep.

One and two: the same story, again

Very small children want familiar things named, gentle rhythm, and repetition. A story that says the same phrase on every page is a good story. They are not following a plot; they are collecting words and the feeling of being read to. Keep it short — a few minutes — and expect to read it again tomorrow. That is not a rut; that is how it works.

Three and four: a little adventure, gently

By three, a child can follow a small journey: someone sets out, something happens, they come home. Animals are the great subject at this age — a cub who is nervous of the water, an elephant learning what her trunk is for — because a child can be the animal without being frightened for themselves. Four-year-olds add the question why: they want to know how things work, and a story that quietly explains something true (where rain comes from, why the moon changes shape) satisfies that without winding them up.

Avoid, at bedtime, anything genuinely scary or anything that ends unresolved. Three- and four-year-olds carry a worry into sleep with them.

Five and six: real things, told warmly

Five- and six-year-olds can handle a bigger world — history, the ocean, the stars — and they like facts woven into the story rather than a story that is only feelings. This is the age for the childhoods of real people, for dinosaurs with their actual names, for the Ice Age and the deep sea. The tone still has to be warm and the pace still has to be slow; the difference is that the content can be true.

Seven and up: bedtime is not the chapter book

Older children can enjoy long stories, and should — on the sofa, on a weekend. At bedtime, though, the same rule holds: something complete, something calm, and something that ends. True stories work especially well here: a five-minute biography, a piece of the night sky, how the first wheel changed things. They give a busy mind one thing to hold rather than a cliffhanger to chew on.

And do not stop reading to a child because they can read to themselves. Most children, well past the age they will admit it, still like the sound of a parent's voice at the end of the day.

Finding the right shelf

Every story here carries an age window, and the age pages collect them: stories for 3-year-olds, for 4-year-olds, and so on up to eleven. A child's own age is a good place to start; a year younger is a good place to go on a difficult night.